Proposed US law could deal knockout blow to FBI in overseas cloud privacy ding-dongs
February 13, 2015
Grazed from TheRegister. Author: Iain Thomson.
The US Congress, now fully under Republican control, is getting busy with laws to protect data: two bipartisan bills appeared on Thursday that would bring the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) bang up to date in the 21st century. The first piece of proposed legislation [PDF] is the Electronic Communications Privacy Amendments Act of 2015, submitted in the Senate by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and in the House by Representatives Kevin Yoder (R-KS) and Jared Polis (D-CO).
The bill would require cops and the Feds to show probable cause when seeking a search warrant to rifle through people’s emails and other data. (California is mulling over a similar requirement.) Under today’s rules, set back when Ronald Reagan was in the White House, deem that any email can be searched, with probable cause or not, provided at least 180 days have passed since the message was sent and received…
"For too long now Americans’ electronic communications have been subject to invasive and unwarranted searches based on laws written for the Apple 2, not the iPhone 6," said Rep. Jared Polis…
Read more from the source @ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/02/13/congress_gets_serious_data_protection_with_new_bills_to_overhaul_ecpa/